New publication with our collaborators at Virginia Tech shows that our predictions of net carbon climate benefits from bioenergy crops cannot assume that the ecosystem will always be a net sink of carbon from the atmosphere. The importance of background climate, management, and land-use history, could determine whether widespread deployment of switchgrass as a bioenergy feedstock for climate change mitigation will truly achieve the desired outcome.

My publication in MDPI data outlines the O’Halloran lab’s new eddy covariance mesonet with site, equipment, and data-workflow descriptions alongside some preliminary figures. Our coastal sites are somewhat unique in that there are highly productive upland forests alongside “blue-carbon” tidal salt marshes. The first year’s data has already been published to Ameriflux with more to come in the near future.